In the Stable

Albert Pinkham Ryder painted with a "wet-on-wet" technique, by adding new layers of thick paint and varnish before the previous ones had a chance to dry. This overloaded the work to such an extent that one visitor described his work as a "boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly," and some paintings are still soft a hundred years later. At one point, In the Stable was covered with a network of cracks known as alligatoring, the worst of which have since been filled by a conservator. The white horse in the image was modeled after Ryder's horse Charley, which he owned as a child in New Bedford, Massachusetts. (Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989)

Luce Object Quote

"I have been working to get my paint less painty looking than any man who went before me..." Ryder, Wood diary no. 6, August 1896, Wood Papers, Huntington Library, quoted in Broun, Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1989

Credit: Gift of John Gellatly